Monday Roundup: New Feature, Sunshine Week, And Halliburton Skips Town

This week's feature is part one of a two-part examination of higher education in Texas, by Dr. Kimi King. This week's installment looks at how Texas ranks compared to other states on primary and secondary education programs as well as the economic benefits of kindergarten.

There was the usual deadline rush for bills at the end of last week — Friday was the last day for lawmakers to file bills this session. Now only bills designated as emergency legislation by Perry, Dewhurst, or Craddick can get in for consideration. With all the troubles underway currently, I can only imagine this will lead to some strategic maneuvers down the stretch. For instance, I'm willing to bet you'll see further legislation dealing with the TYC or the lottery or curing cancer between now and sine die.

The American Society of Newspaper Editors, in connection with their proclamation of this week as 'National Sunshine Week', conducted an informal audit of government agency responses to requests for public documents. Reporters all across the nation went to their respective local governments and asked for a copy of that government's emergency response plan. Even though it is a document that must be available to the public by law, three agencies out of nine in Texas outright denied the requests. Only three agencies fully complied. When I hear stories like this, I wonder if it is more a problem of bureaucracy or communication, laziness or ignorance, and I usually end up deciding it is some combination of the four.

Remember that toxic mulch fire in Helotes, outside of San Antonio, that was seemingly burning forever and no one could put out? It's still burning, and apparently they can't put water on it or it will pollute the groundwater. That's an unfortunate development, since the smoke and fumes from the fire are also pollutants. This seems like a problem that could be solved with the Power of Government, but I don't know enough about the situation to say that unequivocally — maybe it is a mutant superfire, upon which conventional weapons will not work.

If there were some municipal government that could figure out a way to turn a never-ending mulch fire into a thermal energy windfall or something generally useful, it is Austin's. The American Council on Renewable Energy recently named Austin the top city in America for renewable energy. Mayor Will Wynn recently oversaw the passage of his Climate Protection Plan, which mandates all city buildings be powered with renewable energy by 2012, among other developments.

Houston's energy news was quite different, and non-renewed: Halliburton announced on Sunday that it is relocating the corporate headquarters (and the CEO) to the United Arab Emirate's tourism paradise of Dubai. Among other problems, you can expect this to raise the ire of legislators and national security executives alike. The story in the Chron is actually quite detailed and pretty interesting. Halliburton is currently the largest private contractor operating for the Pentagon in Iraq, and it sees to most of the logistics services for troops deployed in the Middle East though subsidiary KBR.

Speaking of Iraq, last Monday I related to you that the Pentagon has no Plan B for Iraq, or, to use their description for it, Plan B is to make Plan A work. Well, now they've begun to formulate a Plan B. Reuters picked up a Los Angeles Times story about how the new plans are in preparation for the failure of the surge or a limitation of the surge by Congressional Democrats. This means that, at least in the Department of Defense, the reality that the President's plans could be limited is being acknowledged.

Finally, Chuck Hagel is making an announcement. We'll see what he has to say.